A disaster is, as they say, too good to be wasted. Sadly several western groups have exploited the recent tragedies in the Bangladesh clothes-making industry to bamboozle their governments and global retail brands into actions that are self-serving, while attempting to disguise them as beneficial to the nation and its workers. They also divert attention from a superior response that serves Bangladesh better.

常言道，灾难是不可浪费的“机会”。遗憾的是，一些西方团体利用了最近孟加拉国服装制造业的悲剧事件，诱使他们的政府和一些全球零售品牌采取了一些只对这些西方团体有利的举措，并试图将这些举措伪装为对孟加拉国及该国工人有利的东西。这些西方团体还转移了人们对一项更有利于孟加拉国的回应的注意力。

So consumers have blamed those companies that buy “cheap”, often high-fashion, garments for the unsafe conditions in Bangladesh factories because low prices allegedly lead to skimping on safety. The EU has proposed that Europe’s future trade agreements accord “a more prominent place” to health and safety considerations. The US, under pressure from the labour unions, has suspended Bangladesh from the WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION’SGeneralized System of Preferences until safety standards in factories are improved and wages are increased.

因此，消费者将孟加拉工厂不安全的工作条件归咎于那些购买“廉价的”且往往非常时尚的服装的公司，因为低价被指会导致安全措施缩水。欧盟(EU)提议，欧洲未来的贸易协议要赋予健康和安全考量“更加突出的地位”。迫于工会的压力，美国已暂停对孟加拉国商品的世贸组织(WTO)普惠制(Generalized System of Preferences )待遇，待孟加拉国改善工厂安全标准、提升工人工资之后恢复。

Already, responding to the refrain of the “high cost of cheap goods”, and intimidated by hundreds of thousands of protesting social-media signatures, many European brands have agreed to accept responsibility for safety lapses in Bangladeshi-owned and managed garment factories via the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

为应对要求消除“廉价商品高昂的外部成本”的呼声，以及惧于社交媒体成千上万人的签名抗议，欧洲很多品牌已经同意签署《孟加拉国消防和建筑安全协议》(Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh)，从而对孟加拉人拥有和管理的服装工厂中的安全漏洞负起责任。

But such accords fly in the face of the fact, known to safety experts, that responsibility for maintaining standards lies with factory management and owners alone. Remember that exit doors existed but were closed by the management. And these managers are Bangladeshi. This is also why most US brands have correctly refused to sign agreements that pin legal liability on them if anything goes wrong.

但对安全专家来说，这类协议悍然不顾事实，即保持安全标准完全是工厂管理者和老板的责任。要知道，发生火灾的大楼是有消防出口的，只是被管理人员封上了。这些管理者也都是孟加拉人。大多数美国品牌之所以正确地拒绝签署这些协议（这些协议要求签署者在工厂出问题时承担法律责任），原因就在这里。

As it happens, the brands have been responsible, by buying garments from these locally owned factories, for one of the most remarkable improvements in the wellbeing of Bangladeshi workers, exactly as in China where export performance over decades led eventually to labour shortages and hence to rapid improvement in wages and working conditions. The garment industry in Bangladesh has nurtured 4m jobs, most of which have gone to women, and has provided the driver for growth in a country still awaiting the comprehensive “liberal” reforms that transformed India after 1991.

通过从这些由孟加拉国本地人拥有的工厂购买服装，西方品牌实际上促使孟加拉国工人的生活状况出现了一项最明显的改善。正如在中国，几十年来的出口活动最终导致劳动力短缺，进而带来工资和工作条件的迅速改善。孟加拉国服装行业提供了400万个就业岗位——大部分给了女性，并为一个仍未实现全面“自由化”改革的国家提供了增长的动力。同样的改革在1991年之后曾促使印度实现转型。

Labour organisations, by pressurising suppliers to increase wages prematurely, will deprive Bangladesh of this advantage and render its products uncompetitive in global markets. The Workers’ Rights Consortium, which has tried to muscle its way into the aftermath of the Bangladesh tragedies, argues the high wages will simply covert profits into wages. This is a fallacy, of course, since the garment industry worldwide is immensely competitive and does not have the excess profits that would absorb higher wages.

通过向孟加拉国供应商施压、要求其在条件不成熟的情况下增加工人工资，劳工组织将剥夺孟加拉国的低成本优势，从而导致孟加拉国的商品在全球市场上丧失竞争力。一直试图影响孟加拉悲剧善后处理的“工人权利共同体”(Workers’ Rights Consortium)辩称，一部分利润可以简单地转化为更高的工资。这当然是一种谬论，因为全球服装行业竞争非常激烈，不存在可转化为更高工资的额外收益。

Again, there is no correlation between unionisation and safety. In the US, industrial fires have become rare while unionisation rates have fallen to negligible levels in the past four decades. The garment industries in Vietnam and China have experienced few fires, even though unions do not exist. In addition, the notion that union officials will become safety experts is quixotic.

此外，工会化和安全之间没有关联。过去的四十年里，美国的工会覆盖率降到了极低的水平，但工业生产中的火灾却变得极少发生。尽管没有真正意义上的工会，但越南和中国的服装行业也很少发生火灾。此外，工会官员会成为安全专家的想法是不切实际的。

Equally, there is no guarantee that the brands that have been guilt-tripped into accepting responsibility for Bangladeshi units (over which they have no control) will not quietly seek to exit to other locations with better governance systems. Since the possibility of future fires cannot be ruled out, the possibility of being tainted is also very real; why take this risk? In fact, Disney in the US has already said it will shift out of Bangladesh. So in these ways, too, Bangladesh and its garment workers will stand to lose.

同样地，这些出于愧疚而承担起（不受它们控制的）孟加拉国工厂安全责任的西方品牌，也难保不会将生产悄悄地转移至公司治理体系更加完善的地方。因为未来发生火灾的可能性无法排除，受到连累的可能性依然是切实存在的，所以何必冒险？事实上，美国迪士尼(Disney)已经表示将搬出孟加拉国。因此，从这些方面来看，孟加拉及其服装工人将会蒙受损失。

The appropriate way to improve safety in Bangladeshi manufacturing is not to scapegoat the brands but to recognise that the blame belongs to the indifference of the owners of the factories where safety is neglected.

改善孟加拉国工厂安全状况的合理方式不是让西方品牌当替罪羊，而是承认事故应归咎于那些麻木不仁、忽视安全问题的工厂老板。

If western governments are to play a creative role on safety, they need to use aid agencies such as USAid to provide technical experts on safety for all industrial factories to countries such as Bangladesh. All else is not just irrelevant; it also promises to do untold harm.

如果西方政府要在工厂安全方面发挥有益作用，它们需要做的是利用美国国际开发署(USAid)等援助机构，为孟加拉国等国所有工厂提供技术专家。其他所有举措不仅没有意义，还会带来无尽的损害。